I did not have class today till nine o’clock so I was going to stay clear of campus until then and just see what happens. We were ordered by the prime minister to go to class and from talking to other students we were supposed to go to class. Stacey had gotten a text from her professor that her 7:00am class was being held and that attendance was mandatory. When I woke up at 6:00am we could hear some students singing from other dorms, so I made the decision that if Stacey had to go to class she was not going to go to class by herself. There is no way I would have let her walk through campus alone. Stacey, Monica, and I set out for campus at 6:45am and it was completely dead. It was like the calm before the storm. Stacey went to class and they were going to have a lecture so I met up with Chris to go get breakfast and then went to the Links office to talk to Mama Kaaya to see what was going on and what we should do if they close campus. She didn’t have any answers for us or advice it was frustrating because we were at a loss of what to do. I later understood that no one really knew what was going to happen. It was all up to the students and if they decided that they were going to continue with the strike. Around nine o’clock there was no sign of the strikers so Chris and I walked to my seminar to see if there was any chance of having class, but there were no students or professor. On our way back to meet Stacey, and Kate at the Link’s café we saw the students who were striking walking through campus. It was a smaller group than the previous days only about three hundred students. They most startling part was that they were walking in complete silence no one said a word. They walked up to the outside of the administration building and soon as everyone was there they joined hands and started singing the Tanzanian national anthem and then the familiar chant of “solidarity forever.” That was all it took, within an hour signs had gone up that campus was being closed indefinitely and students had to leave campus immediately.
During the next four hours on campus there was a lot of tension. The military was present and ready to spring into action all it would take would be one student to slip up or get angry. I felt like I was walking through a scene from the movie Hotel Rwanda with a pickup truck with speakers in the back making announcements that all Tanzanian students were ordered to leave campus by 2:00pm. That truck was followed by another truck that was full of military personnel fully equipped and ready to use tear gas and water cannons if a riot broke out. There were also military teams, with tanks and tear gas launchers up by Hill Park who were on stand by waiting for the order to move if anything happened. Soon as the announcement was made that campus was shut down I went back to my room to help Monica pack and to lay low for the rest of the day. By two o’clock all of the Tanzanian students were gone, 16,000 students had left campus in four hours. It was over . . . UDSM is closed indefinitely. I had to say a quick goodbye to my roommate and was not able to see some friends before they left. It sucks because I don’t know if I will every see them or Monica again.
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